well that is a very good question !! as currently there are several prestigious publisher trying to have optional open access papers if the authors are willing to pay publication fee.

In general, I would make a list of possible journals that could be the best fit to my topic and contributions. This is very important to make sure that the reviewers will be somehow expert in your field and will give a valuable comments and feedback.

As my research field is electrical and computer engineering, I always prefer to follow directly IEEE, Elesiever, and IET and search about my keywords. After preparing my list, now the time to categorize them into various levels based on their quality.

I always keep in mind that the publications should be at least cited by SCOPUS database (elsevier) and it will be much better (in term of value) if cited by ISI (thomson reuters). So my list will be categorize into SCOPUS-indexed and ISI-indexed. If they have common items then i will keep them only in ISI-indexed which is always higher in the value.

The next step is to get the impact factor of each ISI-indexed journal and arrange them in a descending order. You can use researchgate to get the impact factor or you can refer to the source from thomsonreuters if you have an access. otherwise you can search for "JCR-Impact-Factors-List-2013" though Google engine.

Finally, based on your contributions you can estimate the chances of getting successfully published by each of the journal in your aforementioned list.

Best of luck !!

well that is a very good question !! as currently there are several prestigious publisher trying to have optional open access papers if the authors are willing to pay publication fee.

In general, I would make a list of possible journals that could be the best fit to my topic and contributions. This is very important to make sure that the reviewers will be somehow expert in your field and will give a valuable comments and feedback.

As my research field is electrical and computer engineering, I always prefer to follow directly IEEE, Elesiever, and IET and search about my keywords. After preparing my list, now the time to categorize them into various levels based on their quality.

I always keep in mind that the publications should be at least cited by SCOPUS database (elsevier) and it will be much better (in term of value) if cited by ISI (thomson reuters). So my list will be categorize into SCOPUS-indexed and ISI-indexed. If they have common items then i will keep them only in ISI-indexed which is always higher in the value.

The next step is to get the impact factor of each ISI-indexed journal and arrange them in a descending order. You can use researchgate to get the impact factor or you can refer to the source from thomsonreuters if you have an access. otherwise you can search for "JCR-Impact-Factors-List-2013" though Google engine.

Finally, based on your contributions you can estimate the chances of getting successfully published by each of the journal in your aforementioned list.

Best of luck !!

I would like to add one experience I had with Beall's list of Predatory Publishers (of open access journals). I usually check these journals. However, I wrote once to the editor of a journal mentioned in the list. I found out that they were in a major court dispute and Beall's list is accused of being unrealistic and biased.

Another incident I published with one journal mentioned in the list, accused of not having a clear blind refereeing process. To my surprise, this journal had five referees for each article sent to them. Their work is extremely tough and asked for excellent details that matched any other refereed journal work. I did not understand why this journal was included in the list and the fees are almost free (very symbolic).

Moreover, I used elsevier's softare to find the best match between the title and abstract of a recent paper I wrote, I got three results with 100% match. To my surprise the fees for publication ranged from $1500 to 2200 dls. With no funds available, bye bye to that option!

I prefer ISI- and Scopus-indexed journals, too, and if the publisher is unknown to me, I always check if the journal is really ISI-indexed or not as some open access publishers lie about it.

In case the journal is not indexed, I check the Beall's list of predatory publishers. Also, for me it is a warning sign if the journal's homepage is not fully functional (e.g. if there is no information about the editorial board), if it has lots of typos and if it promises to publish articles in a few weeks. I prefer not to publish in journals that charge authors.

Unfortunately I do not have any specific experience with open access journal, because I try to go by the traditional publishers whose reputation is known directly or through the professional society to which it is affiliated. Go very carefully about the aims of the journal where they should cite the scope of the journal. If the scope talks about all possible areas in a very large spectrum of disciplines, then I know straight away that it is not to be trusted.

Firstly, you have to check the indexing of the journal on http://www.scimagojr.com/

then check the previous issues and see if this journal is publishing enough number of articles to make it continue or not?

Also, see the publication fee and quality of the articles in the journal archive.

Good luck

It depends on:

1)the years that this journal is acting, the more the years the more the confidence

2)it depends on the success stories of it: if star articles have been published there, then why not?

Indices and lists are not the only truth.

Thank you for your advices dear colleagues. It never crossed my mind that they are predatory publishers. I will be careful next time.

Perhaps the first thing to check is to make sure that the journal (or its publisher) is NOT on the Beall's list of predatory journals/publishers (http://scholarlyoa.com).

Also, as a very rough guidance ("initial approximation"), I'd say that an OA journal is far more likely to be OK if it is a *diamond* OA journal (i.e. free for both authors and the readers, so there are no access fees and no publication fees, see e.g. http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/ for details). Such journals do exist e.g. in mathematics but I am not quite sure about other fields.